"Precisionism: a style of painting developed to its fullest in the U.S. in the 1920s, associated
especially with Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Sheeler,
and characterizedby clinically precise, simple, and clean-edged
rendering ofarchitectural, industrial, or urban scenes usually devoid of
humanactivity or presence." From: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/precisionism

The artists who came to be known as the Precisionists never
formally organized themselves as a group or issued a manifesto; instead,
they were associated through their common style and subjects. Around
1920, a number of artists in the United States began experimenting with a
highly controlled approach to technique and form. They consistently
reduced their compositions to simple shapes and underlying geometrical
structures, with clear outlines, minimal detail, and smooth handling of
surfaces. Their paintings, drawings, and prints also showed the
influence of recent work by American photographers, such as Paul Strand,
who were utilizing sharp focus and lighting, unexpected viewpoints and
cropping, and emphasis on the abstract form of the subject.

They consistently reduced their compositions to
simple shapes and underlying geometrical structures, with clear
outlines, minimal detail, and smooth handling of surfaces.

The Precisionists borrowed freely from recent movements in
European art, including Purism's call to visual order and clarity and
Futurism's celebration of technology and expression of speed through
dynamic compositions. Charles Demuth adapted Cubism's geometric simplifications and faceted, overlapping planes (1984.433.156), while Morton Schamberg can be linked to Dada through his use of machinery as nontraditional subject matter (68.115.1).

In other respects, however, the Precisionists defined themselves as distinctively American artists. Artists such as Charles Sheeler,
Elsie Driggs, Ralston Crawford, and Louis Lozowick, as well as Demuth,
distanced themselves from European influences by selecting subjects from
the American landscape and regional American culture. These subjects
included elements unique to early twentieth-century life, including
urban settings (particularly the dramatic engineering advances of
skyscrapers and suspension bridges) and the sprawling industrial locales
of steel mills, coalmines, and factory complexes (40.111.102; 67.238; 49.59.2).
Many of the same artists also applied their new, hard-edged style to
long-familiar American scenes, such as agricultural structures or local
crafts and domestic architecture (33.43.259; 64.310).
Even such conventional motifs as a still life of fruit or flowers were
treated to a fresh assessment in the Precisionist style (1995.547.3).

Manhatta.
However, as the country experienced a psychological reaction to the
mass destruction wrought overseas by the First World War and, later, the
economic hardships of the Great Depression within its own borders, the
United States entered a period of political isolationism. Cultural
critics voiced a need for America to seek and shape its national
identity through its own history, landscape, artifacts, and regional
traditions. This attitude was also reflected in a revival of interest in
American folk art. The functional design of Shaker furniture, for
example, was now taken as evidence of preindustrial self-sufficiency,
and was also seen as proto-modern in its simplicity (1992.24.8).

Accordingly,
there existed two opposing views of the machine's place in contemporary
American society, both of which were embodied by Precisionist art. One
view was the utopian ideal of technology bringing order to the modern
world by enhancing the speed, efficiency, and cleanliness of everyday
life (49.128).
It is worth noting that Precisionism coincided with the landmark
Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes,
held in Paris in 1925, and the like-minded Machine-Age Exposition
hosted by New York in 1927, both of which endorsed the amalgamation of
art, design, and industry in streamlined products for everyday use. The
opposing view stressed the dehumanizing effects of technology, warning
that it would replace workers, create pollution, and dominate the
landscape in a destructive manner. Occasionally, these two attitudes
coexisted in an ambiguous tension within a single work of art
(50.31.4).

Initially, no single label existed for this loosely
associated group of artists of the Machine Age. They were frequently
called "the Immaculates" or "modern classicists" throughout the 1920s.
Although the "precision" and the "precise line" of their art were often
noted in written reviews, it was not until 1927 that Alfred H. Barr, the
director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, officially used the
name "Precisionists" to describe them as a group. Other early sponsors
of the style in New York City included Charles Daniel of the Daniel
Gallery, who exhibited the work of Charles Demuth, Niles Spencer,
Charles Sheeler, and Preston Dickinson; Stephen Bourgeois of the
Bourgeois Gallery, who promoted Joseph Stella and George Ault; and arts
patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and her Whitney Studio Club.

Some
of these artists, such as Demuth, Stella, and Sheeler, continued to
work in a Precisionist style for several decades. Meanwhile, a second
generation of artists working in a Precisionist style emerged during the
1930s. While still taking the American industrial landscape as a
frequent subject, they tended more toward abstraction (50.31.3) or Surrealism (42.155)
in their depictions of modernity. With the close of the 1930s,
furthermore, the United States was approaching involvement in the Second
World War; the use of atomic bombs in that war would give rise to
widespread unease about technology's power to destroy, undermining the
confident outlook that had made the Precisionist mode possible.

The
connections between the Precisionist approach and a wider social
context were strong ones. In the later 1910s and 1920s, the United
States was expanding its communications technology, industrial
production, and construction in urban settings. The changing cityscape
was documented by Strand and Sheeler in 1920, in their short film Jessica MurphyDepartment of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art